NSU-BSO News

FBI Hostage Negotiation School

October 14th - 16th, 2009, Nova Southeastern University (NSU) and the FBI Miami Field Office are co-hosting an FBI Hostage Negotiation School. It will be held on the NSU Davie campus at the DeSantis building (rooms 3032 and 3034) from 8:30 to 4:30 each of those days.  Instructors will include NSU criminal justice professors from the Center for Psychological Studies and College of Pharmacy, and several FBI Agents. Organizers expect about 70 police negotiators to attend from nearly a dozen different police departments, including Broward, Dade, and Palm Beach counties.

Click here to see a tentative schedule for the FBI Hostage Negotiation School.

BSO Hostage Negotiations/SWAT Training

Brandi Booth, M.S. and Amy Angleman, M.A., M.S., participated in a BSO joint Hostage Negotiations/SWAT training in June 2008.  They played two hostage-takers at the North Ridge Hospital in Fort Lauderdale, taking several BSO Explorers hostage.  After four hours of exciting and challenging negotiations, SWAT intervened and rescued the captives.

More Hostage Negotiations/SWAT Training

Today (September 25, 2008) we had a joint hostage negotiation training with the Broward County Sheriff's Office and S.W.A.T. teams. Four of our Nova Players were in attendance and participated in this event. The four doctoral students from the Center for Psychological Studies were: Andrea Brockman, Sam Browning, Amy Angleman and Micol Levi-Minzi. The students worked with BSO officers and S.W.A.T. teams to simulate a hostage negotiation scenario and act as hostages and hostage-takers.

Doctoral Student Presents to FBI National Academy

Doctoral student Brandi Booth, M.S., presented to the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia on Critical Incident Stress Management (CISM) and Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) for their National Academy.  The FBI National Academy is a 10 week program for invited and selected law enforcement leaders and managers ranging from local and sheriff departments to military and federal law enforcement agencies.  Participants have the opportunity to gain leadership and specialized training by taking coursework in Law, Behavioral Science, Forensic Science, Leadership Development, Communication, and Health/Fitness.

CPS PROFESSOR RECEIVES AWARD

Vincent Van Hasselt, Ph.D., Professor of Psychology at the Center for Psychological Studies, recently received an Outstanding Presenter Award at the Annual Conference of the Florida Association of Hostage Negotiators held in Cocoa Beach.  Dr. Van Hasselt’s address, “Police-Assisted Suicide (‘Suicide By Cop’):  Risk Factors and Negotiation”, was presented to local, state, and federal law enforcement hostage negotiators from across Florida, as well as other parts of the country.